by Eric Flint
Battle was about to be joined when Mindaug intervened. “Here,” he said drawing out this pouch. “It is your lucky morning, old woman.”
“But, master,” protested Emma. “They’re not worth that much!”
He looked at her quellingly. “It is my day for doing good deeds. And this lady looks tired. We will eat one goose and sell the rest. I have spoken.”
She was instantly contrite, at least with him, but the look she cast at the smirking old besom was less so. Still, ownership of the geese was handed over, along with the strings attached to the creatures, who did not seem to like Mindaug any more than he liked them. He hastily handed their leashes to Tamas, and watched the goose woman walk off the way she had come. The vegetation on both sides of the track was thick; within a few seconds, she had completely vanished from sight.
“What do we do with these, master?” asked Tamas, pointing to the geese.
“You will be taking them to sell across the river, making a way for me to cross with less notice. We need to cross into Frankish lands, and they will not just let us do so.”
“Ah! I wondered why you were paying so much! They aren’t worth half that. They will let us across with the geese?”
“They will let you and Emma across with the geese. You will create a distraction. I will follow.”
They both nodded. “Yes, master. What do we need to do?” asked Tamas.
“Go across the bridge, go into the market and set loose these geese. With any luck people will chase them. Then run up the street and strew around the money that I will give you. People will be so busy chasing the money, they will not be watching the gate.”
Mindaug knew the idea was entirely ridiculous, but hoped that they would hold out under torture for a little while. He found, oddly, that he hoped that their deaths would be quick. They would create a distraction, of course, but more in the sense of being taken to the garrison, and probably immediately, under escort to the nearest chapter house. Guards being guards, the senior and most skilled would go running off with them, eager to claim the credit for catching them. And the last thing they’d expect would be a second infiltrator, so close behind those inept two.
They would not realize that their guilt would betray them. What knowledge did they have of borders or guards? He took out the two bags of coin he’d prepared last night. There was a good weight to them, more money than either of them—or quite possibly their overlord—had ever seen. Human greed would do the rest.
“This side of the border, you’re peasants. Across the river, with this, you would be rich,” he said, to prevent them running away here and now, and too early. “All you have to do is lie to the border guard and say you have come to sell the geese, and then go scatter the money, and I’ll follow in the chaos.”
Big-eyed and solemn, they nodded. A little later they got underway, driving the geese with him following behind.
The count soon found that his plans were not as complete as they should have been. The geese were not fast movers, and the track they were on led to join a larger track, down which several other people were heading for market, driving a few beasts, carrying baskets and bundles. Mindaug had not envisaged such a crowd. He stopped the horses for a brief moment while fiddling with the tack, and allowed a few of the other traders to get between him and the geese, and the bait.
The bridge had been built for rapid demolition. Three sets of pilings in the river, each linked with logs planked with riven oak—barely wide enough for his wagon, and enough to make his horses balk. The last piling had a gatehouse on it, and entrants queued up for the guard to examine them.
Count Mindaug had expected a commotion ahead. Instead, he and the wagon were causing it. The horses just didn’t like the bridge, the river, or the other traders.
But by then he was already on the bridge, completely unable to get off it. The scene that followed was completely contrary to the plan. The guard, several stout farmers and, to his dismay, even Tamas, came back to help him move. Urgently, he waved the boy on.
It took half an hour, and great patience and determination from a large cowherd, two guards, a shrill and irritable woman with baskets of eggs, and a great deal of swearing to get the wagon into Marchegg. No examination or paperwork had taken place. One guard went back to his post. The other, still shaking his head at the stupidity of bringing horses across that bridge, said: “You’re lucky not to end up in the river, you old fool. What brings you to Marchegg?”
Obviously, his plan of chaos on the bridge with the arrest of the two peasants had not come to fruition. Or if it had, he hadn’t noticed. If all else failed, Mindaug could use magic, but that would undo his attempts at secrecy and probably bring him into a dangerous conflict with the Knights of the Holy Trinity.
“Sir,” he said humbly, “I have a number of books in the wagon. The castle of my old overlord, Count Gastell, when King Emeric executed him, had a library, and I was able to buy it cheaply. Well, the truth be told, the new lord was going to burn them as rubbish. I am a scribe and love books and I had heard that the Franks love books. There are a few tomes I had hoped to sell to the great Knights of the Holy Trinity, as they appear to be on the subject of magic.”
The guard shook his head. “Only a scribe would do something quite as stupid as to try to bring that wagon over the bridge. They’re good horses and a solid wagon, Scribe. How did you come by them?”
“My mother was…um, a favorite of the count,” said Mindaug, making up the tale on the fly, preparing himself for action. “I was destined for the cloister, but he took me to be his scribe. I and my mother had a little put by for the wagon. The horses were his gift to her. She’s dead now, God rest her soul.”
“Fair payment, I suppose. And the reason the new count didn’t want you around.”
“Or me to remain in the area.”
The guard nodded, set his spear aside and said: “Well, show me some of these books.”
So Count Mindaug opened a carefully wrapped box—one of the front ones which contained little that would make a churchman unhappy, not some of the hidden tomes.
“They look of value. Not that you’re likely to sell them in Marchegg. I’ll give you a chitty so you can go on to the chapter house at Eikendal. And don’t come back this way, for heaven’s sake, Scribe. There are better, wider bridges at Pressburg.”
Mindaug, all his cunning plans it seemed in vain and unneeded, had a little time to wonder where he was going to find some new servants and just how far he could be from here by nightfall, while the guard walked back to the gatehouse and returned with a scrap of parchment.
“Here you go. Avoid narrow bridges!”
“I shall,” said the count gratefully. He moved on, passing the market where several people seemed occupied in chasing geese, and out of the far gate, into the Frankish Marches.
He hadn’t gotten very far—just to the first copse—when Tamas and Emma came running to join him, their faces beaming, eagerly holding out his pouches of money. “We didn’t have to use very much, master. You gave us far too much. Emma went to the wine merchant and changed twenty silver pennies into small coppers, and we bought five bags, tied them around the necks of the geese, cut small holes in them and set them loose in the market.”
Count Kazimierz Mindaug, who had kept his calm and not been at a loss for words with the murderous and demon-possessed Grand Duke Jagiellon, had coolly answered the satanic Elizabeth Bartholdy, and had urbanely dealt with the foaming spittle of King Emeric, was now at a loss for words. He just looked at them and shook his head.
Emma looked at him worriedly. “I am sorry, master. Did I spend too much? You can count the money…”
For the second time, his new servants surprised the count so much that he wanted to laugh, and this time he actually did. That was something he had not done for so long he had almost forgotten how. It was obviously such an odd noise that it worried the two of them. “Are you choking, master?” asked Tamas, plainly perturbed, stepping forward.
> “No, I am laughing. I have had no cause to laugh for a long time, and I have lost the skill of it,” he said, shaking his head, feeling a bubble of it still within himself. He looked at the second, larger bag Tamas was holding out. “And what is in that bag? The city guard?”
“Oh, just the goose, master. You did say you wanted to eat one, so I brought it along. I kept the fattest one. I did kill it. I hope that is all right?”
And this time Count Mindaug managed to laugh with somewhat more skill. “I am going to have to get used to this. And now, I think we should remove ourselves from being too close to the goose-infested town of Marchegg.”
So they proceeded on their way, Emma calmly plucking the goose and Tamas driving, while the count found himself as comfortable a place in the wagon bed as the rough road would permit. He attempted to read, and to readjust his ideas around the idea of people who served out of loyalty and, when given a small fortune—brought it back to him.
That had possibilities and possible advantages, even. He was able to grasp that, and to realize that it was a conditional thing, worth keeping alive, at least until he understood it. The joy of it was that Jagiellon, and the demon that owned him, never would or could understand it. Mindaug was not sure he could himself, but at least he knew of its existence now.
Chapter 5
Venice
Marco Valdosta had labored long over the letter he had composed to his friend the Caviliero Francisco Turner. It was dangerous and difficult ground. He knew he was spied on, as indeed were most of the Casa Longi to some extent. In his case, he knew that the watch was fairly intense, because he was the Doge’s ward and well-connected in other areas, as well as having some associations with the stregheria. And there were others that spies and the political overlords of Venice and elsewhere feared—the creatures who were not of this world and beyond their machinations, like the Lion of St. Mark and the tritons of the lagoon. There were spies from Rome, other states, and naturally, Venice herself. Normally, this didn’t worry Marco much. After all, he lived a fairly blameless life. He was sure they found him boring, which was his best defense. And he had an ally they could not reach in the Winged Lion of St. Mark.
But in writing in secret to Francisco he risked two things. The first, obviously, was that Francisco was the trusted confidante of a man the Venetian Republic considered at best a threat, and at worst, one of their most dangerous enemies. Writing to him in secret, well, that made Marco guilty of conspiracy. Marco had done his best, telling Doge Petro that he would be writing privately to Francisco about medical matters. The Doge had raised his eyebrows. “Not my health. Not unless you are telling him it has returned to robust strength and I can at last increase my consumption of the pate made from the livers of fat geese. I am sure as they’re made of livers they must support mine. And best not about the condition of your wife. Those are matters of state, Marco.”
“No. I wish to talk to him about the prevention of the spread of infectious complaints. We get a lot of that every spring and autumn.” That was the truth, but not what this letter would be about. The Doge would have spies listening, night and day.
And that was the second reason Marco was so afraid of the contents of this letter. People, even spies, remained terrified of the plague. It had been centuries since the last exceptionally infectious strain had swept across Europe. The fear still remained. Marco knew that those infected with it, but not yet dying, had also tried to flee, and had carried it with them, spreading the disease. There had been outbreaks of what could be the same disease since, but oddly, they had been contained by their own virulence. The victims had died too fast to pass it on beyond their community, become too sick too rapidly to travel.
It was a terrible thing to hope for, and yet it would spare many lives.
The letter itself was carefully phrased making reference to several of the books that Marco knew his friend and mentor in the Arabic medical tomes would recognize.
My friend in Medicine.
Using the medical methods much criticized by Alpharabius, but that we nonetheless have found completely reliable, we predict that the coming season, particularly in the low-lying areas near the rivers—that is for both Venice and Milan—will spread the swelling condition of which Avicenna refers to in the first book we studied together.
That had been a tome on anatomy, which had described the glands in the groin which typically swelled with the infection from the plague. They’d talked about it at some length and, in Francisco’s dry manner, some humor. “A pity the swelling is in the wrong place,” he’d said, “or I’d have customers prepared to get the plague, aye, and pass it on, just for the swelling.”
I must advise you that we are taking such steps as we can to prevent the spread, and hope you will do the same.
Seemingly an innocuous letter, which would probably still attract suspicion and considerable reading of medical tomes and ones saying that prediction and divination by astrological means were nonsense.
And now to send it… But how best to do so? With the sanction of Petro, who would want to know what it meant? With a private messenger? There would be a good chance of him being intercepted with that message…intercepted, robbed and killed, most likely. Marco wished his grandfather Enrico Dell’este was back in Ferrara. The Old Fox had his reliable networks and methods not available to other men.
“So do you,” said the voice of the Lion within him. “They will rob men, but they’ll be hard pressed to take the message from an undine or one of those they do traffic with.”
“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. I suppose I could be a little more direct then. But I better write it on something waterproof,” said Marco to the inner voice of that magical being he shared his mind with. He got up from his writing desk and went to the room he had converted into a store for his medical paraphernalia, drugs, and instruments. Finding something waterproof was not hard. Finding something he could write on that was also waterproof, and where the writing would not suffer from immersion, was a lot more challenging. Finally he hit on the happy and simple answer of merely using a bottle that he could seal properly.
He went back to his desk to find that someone had bumped over the precariously balanced quill and little ink bottle. It gave him something to clean up and to think about. The letter he’d worked on was ruined, so it was just as well he was writing it again, in more direct terms.
He really didn’t like spies here. Especially if they were going to be that clumsy! He would have to find out who they were and do something about it, because he did not want them accidentally ruining a medical preparation. He didn’t wait, but took the new letter as soon as the ink was dry, folded it and put it in his pouch, and took the bottle in his bag of medical implements and medicines, and headed for the Chapel of St. Raphaella. There he spoke with Brother Mascoli and then went below, through the water door, to call for one the undines.
He had treated several of the merfolk over the last while, and as the Lion he could command anything that lived in the lagoon or marshes of ancient Etruria. But he would rather ask. He had one of Francisco’s books with him, one of those he’d retrieved from the Signori di Notte after Francisco had abruptly left Venice in the wake of Alessia’s disappearance. He’d offered them back to the caviliero when he had returned as Carlo Sforza’s emissary.
Most of them, Francisco had taken with gratitude, but this one he had presented to Marco. “I have another copy, and they’re not easy to come by. This is a later copying and there are a few errors. But it was my original copy, and I did put corrections in when I got an older version.”
One of the undines, Chloe, came to his call. “Healer. Lion,” she said respectfully, as they always did. She was one he had treated before—in the last year he’d treated infections, had sewn up injuries on a fair number of the magical non-humans. Just because they were not human did not mean they could not be hurt, or that they could not become infected, or as he had discovered, that they could not have stomach ailments. That had been
difficult. He had no idea what or how often they ate, or what their normal body temperatures were, or how to treat what was plainly a fever for the merfolk. He’d started developing treatments and learning about their physiology, which he had been painstakingly recording and drawing. He wondered, suddenly, what the spies made of that! He would hate it used against the merpeople. He would have to devise a way to keep it away from them.
“A long silence, Healer. What do you seek?”
“There is a sickness coming among the humans, and I need to send a message to another healer, one who lives in the city of Milan, to warn him. I cannot send the message through the normal human ways, and thus I thought I would ask here. My need is great.”
The undine was amused. “You do know you can command, as the Lion.”
“But I would rather ask, as a friend and your healer,” said Marco.
“And as such we can hardly refuse. Some of our kind do swim north, and they have built canals from the Adda and Ticino rivers. At night we pass through the locks…But reaching humans in their city fastness, and even finding them, if they do not come to water is hard.”
“He talked of going running along the canal path. I have drawn a picture, and this book was once his property.”
“Wait. I go to call my sister Melisande,” said Chloe. “She is from the river-lands. Her nyx-kind like the fresh water.”
So Marco waited.
A little later the undine Chloe returned with two others. They were both smaller than the lagoon undines, but also had that greenish pallor and bare breasts, which they seemed to enjoy showing. He wondered if they did suckle their young, and why he had never seen any.
Once introductions had been done, Melisande and the dark-eyed Rhene said they came from upriver. “We come to feel the salt on our skins,” they explained, without explaining why. Marco had discovered to his surprise that a lot of humans didn’t even think about why. Perhaps the merfolk were similar.
